All articles
On this page
Help & Reference
Every HQ Command at a Glance
Anyone who wants the full menu: every HQ command on one page, with a one-line purpose and a link to the article that teaches it.
A command is what you type inside a session, like /prd or /handoff. If you're not sure how commands relate to skills and workers, Commands, Skills, and Workers untangles it in six minutes. This page lists the commands that ship with a current HQ install, checked against the real command surface rather than older documentation.
Five things to know before the tables:
- The engineering commands are built in. Planning, testing, code review, debugging, and shipping commands like
/tdd,/review, and/landnow come with HQ itself, so there's nothing extra to install. A few other commands still arrive through capability packs, and those are tagged, for example (ships in hq-pack-email-assistant). If a tagged command is missing on your machine, the pack isn't installed yet. Capability Packs: Installing and Managing Them shows the two-minute fix. - Commands with a company prefix, like
acme:weekly-report, are skills your own team created. They're specific to your company, so they aren't listed here. - If you read about a command elsewhere and it isn't on this page (for example
/nexttaskor/remember), it was probably renamed in a later release. The "I'm Stuck" Guide covers what to do when a command you expected doesn't exist. /planis gone as of HQ 16. Use/prdwith the same arguments. Skills also stopped readingCONTEXT.md. They readGLOSSARY.md(andGLOSSARY-MAP.md) now, so if your project still has aCONTEXT.md, rename it withgit mv CONTEXT.md GLOSSARY.md, and aCONTEXT-MAP.mdwithgit mv CONTEXT-MAP.md GLOSSARY-MAP.md.- A dash in the Learn more column means there's no teaching article yet. That's fine: every command explains itself. Type it, or ask HQ "what does /adr do?" first.
The daily loop#
The commands you'll use most days. The Daily Loop walks through the core rhythm.
| Command | What it does | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
/startwork | Load your HQ context and surface the best next work options | The Daily Loop |
/checkpoint | Save a lightweight bookmark of the current session | Sessions and Handoffs |
/handoff | Preserve full session state so a fresh session can pick up cleanly | Sessions and Handoffs |
/resumework | Resume work from a specific handoff thread | Sessions and Handoffs |
/recover-session | Rescue a session that hit its context limit without a handoff | Sessions and Handoffs |
/pin | Anchor a session to one goal so it keeps working toward it and can check its progress | - |
/journal | Write a structured journal entry as durable working memory | - |
/search | Search HQ content and indexed repos | Finding Anything |
/learn | Teach HQ a reusable rule or insight it should keep applying | Teaching HQ |
/retro | Run a project or session retrospective and capture the lessons | Teaching HQ |
/run | Run a worker's skill; with no arguments, list every worker you have | Commands, Skills, and Workers |
/newworker | Create a new worker, a persistent AI specialist | Commands, Skills, and Workers |
/create-skill | Create a shared skill for your company, or turn a repeatable workflow into one | Commands, Skills, and Workers |
/conduct | Hand every task to background workers on the engine you pick (Codex, Grok, or Claude), so your session stays free for new requests. It's on by default in new sessions; /conduct off turns it off for the session | The Daily Loop |
/conduct adopt | Bring sessions you already have open under this conductor session, so you can steer them all from one place | - |
/conduct tell | Send an instruction to one adopted session, like /conduct tell api-refactor stop after the tests pass | - |
/conduct-join | Join this session to a conductor session using the link it gave you (it starts with cl-), so the conductor can send it instructions and get its reports. /conduct-join leave detaches it | - |
/schedule | Schedule recurring jobs on your Outpost, with alerts sent by DM. The old name /job still works as an alias | - |
/capacity | Show usage, limits, and reset times for your Claude, Codex, and Grok accounts. Turn it on once with hq capacity enable, then use /capacity or hq capacity. It only reads. It never switches your provider | - |
/decision-queue | Work through your pending decisions one at a time | - |
/email-assistant | Connect an inbox and run a safe, propose-first email triage loop (ships in hq-pack-email-assistant) | - |
Planning and projects#
The ladder from idea to shipped work. From Idea to Shipped explains when to use which rung.
| Command | What it does | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
/idea | Capture a lightweight idea on the project board | From Idea to Shipped |
/brainstorm | Compare approaches and draft a recommendation before planning | From Idea to Shipped |
/orchestrate | Take an idea all the way to a finished deliverable in one command: research, plan, then build | From Idea to Shipped |
/deep-plan | Deep planning with research agents and a full interview, for big projects | From Idea to Shipped |
/wayfinder | Map out a big project with an unclear destination as a set of investigation tickets, then work through them one session at a time | - |
/review-plan | Stress-test a plan or PRD before you commit to it | From Idea to Shipped |
/prd | Create an execution-ready plan (PRD) and README for a project. It replaced /plan in HQ 16 and takes the same arguments | From Idea to Shipped |
/to-tickets | Break a plan or spec into small tickets that can each be built on their own, in dependency order | - |
/storyboard | Lock the visual design with mockups before building | - |
/execute-task | Execute a single project story through coordinated workers | From Idea to Shipped |
/run-project | Execute a whole project's stories, attended or unattended | From Idea to Shipped |
/run-pipeline | Orchestrate several projects end to end with safety gates | - |
/tdd | Enforce test-driven development: failing test first, then code | - |
/quality-gate | Run pre-commit quality checks: types, lint, tests, coverage | - |
/review | Paranoid code review of your changes before a pull request | - |
/investigate | Systematic root-cause debugging before any fix is attempted | - |
/diagnose | Disciplined diagnosis loop for hard or intermittent bugs | - |
/architect | Surface architectural friction and propose design improvements | - |
/codebase-design | Shared vocabulary and habits for designing clean module boundaries and interfaces | - |
/domain-modeling | Pin down the names and terms a project uses, and keep them in one glossary | - |
/worktree | Set up a separate copy of a repo so a change can happen without touching your main checkout | - |
/land | Land a pull request: monitor CI, resolve review issues, merge, verify | - |
/land-batch | Triage, review, and merge multiple open pull requests in sequence | - |
/ship | Take pull requests from open to merged, deployed, checked live, and monitored | - |
/commit-main | Commit every dirty file in the current repo, only when on main | - |
/clean-worktree | Merge a finished git worktree back and clean it up | - |
/discover | Pull a repo into HQ and learn it into structured knowledge | - |
/document-release | Sync READMEs and docs to match what actually shipped | - |
/publish-docs | Update your company's public docs site to match what shipped | - |
/adr | Record an architecture decision where future sessions will find it | - |
/goals | View and manage company OKRs and key results | - |
/strategize | Prioritize what to work on next | - |
/out-of-scope | Record rejected ideas so future planning doesn't revisit them | - |
/track-estimate | Log a time estimate for a piece of work | - |
/finish-estimate | Close an estimate with the actual time it took | - |
/calibration-report | Summarize how accurate past estimates have been | - |
Sharing#
Getting finished work in front of people. Sharing Your Work teaches the three main paths.
| Command | What it does | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
/deploy | Turn an artifact into a live web link | Sharing Your Work |
/outpost-host | Host an app or website on your Outpost and get back a public link. Only works on an Outpost | - |
/hq-share | Share vault files by single-use link or direct grant | Sharing Your Work |
/hq-files | Inspect or change who can access a vault path | Sharing Your Work |
/dm | Send a teammate a direct message from HQ | Sharing Your Work |
/dm-bind | Link a session to one DM channel so it posts status updates there and picks up replies that steer the work | - |
/delegate | Hand a project to a teammate or bot, with file access, a project brief, and a pickup message | - |
/work-broadcast | Draft a right-sized team announcement about completed or proposed work | Sharing Your Work |
/humanize | Polish human-facing writing to remove AI tells before it goes out | - |
/project-summary | Render a branded visual summary of a project and deploy it as a link | - |
/ascii-graphic | Generate dark ASCII banner graphics for launch assets | - |
Cloud and team#
Identity, sync, secrets, membership, and company context. Start with HQ Cloud Explained if these are new to you.
| Command | What it does | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
/hq-login | Sign in to HQ Cloud | HQ Cloud Explained |
/hq-logout | Sign out and clear local tokens | HQ Cloud Explained |
/hq-whoami | Show who you're signed in as, and until when | HQ Cloud Explained |
/hq-sync | Run a full two-way sync for cloud-backed companies | Sync Guide |
/resolve-conflicts | Resolve sync conflicts by choosing local, cloud, or discard | Sync Guide |
/hq-access | Fix a vault file you can't find or open, whether it's missing, not synced, or needs the owner's permission | Sync Guide |
/hq-secrets | Use stored credentials safely, without ever pasting them | Secrets Guide |
/hq-integrations | Connect company apps like Linear or Notion, choose who can use them, and use them from any session | - |
/onboard | Create or join an HQ company | Team Rollout |
/accept | Accept a membership invite from a link or token | Team Rollout |
/new-hire | Bring a new teammate on board: invite, role, file access, and an onboarding packet | Team Rollout |
/new-agent | Set up a cloud bot with its own identity, file access, and credentials, then check that it works | - |
/team-access | Choose what every company member can read and write in the vault by default | Team Rollout |
/designate-team | Make a company cloud-backed and sync its team setup | Team Rollout |
/promote | Change a member's role or a guest's access scope | Team Rollout |
/newcompany | Scaffold a new company, optionally all the way to operational | Companies, Projects, and Repos |
/meeting-notes | Read meeting notes, transcripts, and recaps for a company | Meetings and Signals |
/signals | Read extracted decisions, action items, risks, and commitments | Meetings and Signals |
/ontology | Read a company's entity map and context brief | - |
/registry | Inspect or update a company's resource registry | - |
/sync-registry | Rebuild a company's resource registry index | - |
Using HQ from Claude Cowork
These commands exist for one situation: you're running HQ inside Cowork (a sandboxed plugin host) where the normal HQ tools aren't directly reachable. They mirror the everyday commands above. All of them (ship in hq-pack-cowork).
| Command | Mirrors |
|---|---|
/hq-cowork | The entry point: discovers and routes to every HQ capability available in Cowork |
/hq-cowork-sync | /hq-sync |
/hq-cowork-search | /search |
/hq-cowork-files | /hq-files |
/hq-cowork-share | /hq-share |
/hq-cowork-secrets | /hq-secrets |
/hq-cowork-dm | /dm |
/hq-cowork-meetings | /meeting-notes and /signals |
/hq-cowork-cli | Long-tail hq CLI functionality, safely guarded |
/hq-cowork-install | Installs the Cowork pack itself |
Help#
When something is broken, confusing, or missing.
| Command | What it does | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
/setup | Run the guided setup wizard | Your First 30 Minutes |
/tutorial | Hands-on lessons for HQ workflows | Getting More Help |
/hq-checkup | Check that HQ is working and safely fix what it can, like updating HQ, starting the app, and backing up unsaved work | The "I'm Stuck" Guide |
/hq-bug | File a bug report or feature request, with session context attached | Getting More Help |
/hq-heal | Triage and repair HQ session errors like hook crashes or sync failures | The "I'm Stuck" Guide |
/update-hq | Upgrade HQ to the latest release | FAQ |
/free-disk-space | Find disk space you can get back from old worktrees, build folders, and dev caches. It only reports unless you add --apply, and it never deletes full repo copies, .env files, or work you haven't pushed | Storage and Disk Space |
/cleanup | Audit and clean HQ structure, indexes, and stale content | - |
/garden | Audit content for stale, duplicate, or inaccurate information | - |
/knowledge-pulse | Run a freshness pass over company knowledge and policies | - |
/harness-audit | Score your HQ setup across health and safety dimensions | - |
/import-context | Bring your past AI work into HQ: Claude Code, Codex, Grok, and claude.ai history, plus skills, settings, and projects on disk. The old name /import-claude still works as an alias | - |
/convert-codex | Add Codex support to an older, Claude-first HQ | - |
/personal-interview | Build your owner profile and writing voice through an interview | - |
One thing this page doesn't cover#
Slash commands run inside a session. The hq command you may see in terminal instructions is a different, smaller tool for managing packs and sync from outside a session. Capability Packs covers the part of it you're most likely to meet, and The HQ Ecosystem has the full product map.
If you get stuck#
If a command on this page doesn't exist on your machine, check whether it's pack-tagged and see Capability Packs. If a command you read about elsewhere is missing, see The "I'm Stuck" Guide. Still stuck? /hq-bug.